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To: E who wrote (622)	8/24/2001 4:02:56 PM
From: Solon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 51717

Have I mentioned I thought it was bullshit?!! That isn't the first time you've mentioned that you don't like cute children ;)

To: E who wrote (622)	8/24/2001 4:36:50 PM
From: Win Smith	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 51717

E, to tie a few recent topics together, your response to that book reminds me of something I heard years ago, during my Bettelheim exposure. I happened to meet someone who was some kind of mental health program evaluator, and asked him about Bettelheim's autism program. He said that the professional take on it was that the patients were consciously or unconsciously selected, they had to have some level of responsiveness to get into the program. The evaluation I recall from the book reviews when "A Home for the Heart" came out was that a highly committed, live in staff could sometimes do wonders, regardless of underlying theory. One other thing I recall Bettelheim saying in his class is that "behavior is always overdetermined." I took that to heart, though probably not in the sense he meant, which I wouldn't guess at. I took it to mean that there's any number of reasons for why we do what we do. You can pick out a few if you want, and you could be sort of correct correct without being really correct. Sometimes we can be changed by little things, sometimes big things don't phase us. Sometimes, talk can help people, even when it seems that it shouldn't. Other times, you can talk for forever and it doesn't make any difference. I think a couple big reasons that psychiatrists are so into drugs these days is that it's both a lot easier to administer than counseling and a lot easier to quantify and follow the effects. People take antidepressants, 2/3s of them get better, vs. 1/3 on placebo. It's worth a shot. Same thing with ritalin, it's something relatively easy to do, that doesn't require the professional resources that counseling would. In an ideal world, other approaches might be better. Practically, you have to try the easy things first.